Ag Notebook for Jan. 6

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Farm bill extension evidence of lost clout ... A patchwork extension of federal farm programs passed as part of a larger “fiscal cliff” bill keeps the price of milk from rising but doesn’t include many of the goodies that farm-state lawmakers are used to getting for their rural districts.

House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders who spent more than a year working on a half-trillion-dollar, five-year farm bill that would keep subsidies flowing had to accept in the final hours a slimmed-down, nine-month extension of 2008 law with few extras for anyone.

With the new Congress opening Thursday, they’ll have to start the farm bill process again, most likely with even less money for agriculture programs this year and the recognition that farm interests have lost some of the political clout they once held.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said it even more bluntly on the Senate floor just after she learned the bare-bones extension would be part of the fiscal cliff deal.

“There is no way to explain this,” she said. “None. There is absolutely no way to explain this other than agriculture is just not a priority.”

— The Associated Press

Leasing land aims to attract a new breed of farmers ... For now, the land lies fallow.

But come spring, as the first shoots push through the fertile soil, a Chester County farm that once belonged to Samuel and Eleanor Morris ­— two of the region’s conservation pioneers — will emerge as a showcase in the nascent national movement to give conserved land new social and environmental purpose by using it for sustainable agriculture.

The Morris family envisions five or six farmers leasing portions for vegetables and poultry.

An orchard and beef cattle, perhaps.

The leasing aspect is aimed at a new breed of farmer: urbanites turning to agriculture as an environmental and sustainable enterprise.

But they lack the land, which is prohibitively expensive here.

Much of the 400-acre Morris property is in the state’s farmland-preservation program and has been farmed traditionally for decades, but supporters say it will become a model for how to view open-space conservation.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

Extraordinary snowfall needed to relieve drought ... Despite getting some big storms last month, much of the U.S. is still desperate for relief from the nation’s longest dry spell in decades.

And experts say it will take an absurd amount of snow to ease the woes of farmers and ranchers.

The same fears haunt firefighters, water utilities and many communities across the country.

Winter storms have dropped more than 15 inches of snow on parts of the Midwest and East in recent weeks.

Climatologists say it would take at least 8 feet of snow — and likely far more — to return the soil to its pre-drought condition in time for spring planting.

A foot of snow is roughly equal to an inch of water, depending on density.

Many areas are begging for moisture after a summer that caused water levels to fall to near-record lows on lakes Michigan and Huron.

The Mississippi River has declined so much that barge traffic south of St. Louis could soon come to a halt.

Out West, firefighters worry that a lack of snow will leave forests and fields like tinder come spring, risking a repeat of the wildfires that burned some 9.2 million acres in 2012.

— The Associated Press

Hemp could ignite farm, manufacturing economies ... The founder of a Glenwood Springs-area hemp textiles company, Enviro Textiles LLC, believes Colorado is poised to enter a new era of prosperity thanks to the recent passage of Amendment 64 to the state Constitution.

Barbara Filippone, 56, who founded Enviro Textiles six years ago, has been promoting the beneficial qualities of hemp nationally and internationally for 24 years.

She and her daughter, Summer Star Haeske, 30, run the company with a staff of about 10 people, providing hemp and other nontraditional fibers to manufacturers and working to change the perception of hemp in the U.S.

She said nearly 4,000 people work for other companies at hemp manufacturing facilities in countries where hemp is legal, such as Mexico, Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom and China.

The Glenwood Springs facility, she said, is a warehouse stocked with more than 500 different samples of hemp fabrics, blends and other textile products.

Currently, the only Colorado manufacturing, she said, is the spinning of yarn in a Palisade facility, and special orders of T-shirts and other items of clothing for in-state customers.

— The Glenwood Springs Post Independent

New program promotes farming for veterans ... When Joseph Fields deployed to Iraq for the third time with the Kentucky Army National Guard in 2008, he and his wife, Heather, had big plans for their recently bought seven-acre farm.

Growing up in Kentucky on a small “hobby farm,” Joseph, now 35, knew something about growing vegetables, about beekeeping, about what it would take to get the enterprise off the ground while he worked an outside job in corrections or security.

What the Fieldses didn’t plan on was a career-ending back injury that kept Joseph from working for months after he came back to Kentucky in February 2009. That created a serious financial setback.

But next year, the Fieldses’ farm will be the pilot project designed to nurture veterans with an interest in farming.

The program, Growing Warriors, will build them a greenhouse. And with a $30,000 grant, the program will soon work with a dozen other veteran families who want to learn the basics of how to grow their own food at an organic community garden at the Veterans Administration clinic in Kentucky.